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Daniel Silliman
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| 20.4.02 |
Trim Sentences, Tight Paragraphs, Solid Words
I have read my story on Ed Carter, a student charged with stealing credit cards, over a few times, and every time I stop at the sentence: Carter took them.
That was the turning point. The time and place when he made a decision that changed his life and changed the lives of those around him and it is summed up in a one-sentence paragraph. It is explained, in all its force and bite and pain and stupidity.
This reminds me of the power of simplicity. I certainly believe in the Hemmingway/Orwell school of short sentences, tight paragraphs and small words.
The most reliable, solid words in English are the words: “said,” “and,” “the.” I rely on stable words, good words that have a history of sturdy and unflowered communication.
I am a journalist. I believe in trim sentences and solid words. They carry the weight that gets hidden in the bushes of complicated prose.
by Daniel Silliman @
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| 19.4.02 |
Humanity, rendered in ink
I went to the courthouse the other morning to attend the sentencing of Hillsdale College student, Edward Carter. I saw again why writer and journalist Tom Wolfe recommended that good writers and writers who wanted to be good turn to the crime beat. No other beat is so full of humanity and pathos.
In 20 minutes I saw four men, two young and two old, come into the court at crisis points in their lives. The young men were there for drugs and the old men were there for alcohol, all of them were there because they had messed up their lives and the lives of those around them. All of them were facing consequences and facing the future, promising things would be different.
I realized, sitting in this little courtroom in a little town in the middle of nowhere of any significance, that I was watching the stuff of great literature and drama. This humanity is the stuff of Dostoevsky and Steinbeck and any other writer who wrote and wrote well of humanity, of fallen men.
The crazy journalist who wrote for Rolling Stone Magazine in a style called Gonzo Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, described it this way: "I have spent half my life trying to get away from journalism, but I am still mired in it--a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures."
I think I am addicted.
I wrote the story of Edward Carter under time constraints, but it was a great story, full of drama. This was the second story I wrote about him, the first being after his arrest. After that story, I received a phone call from an unidentified male who told me I was a soundrel and promised to physically hurt me, a promise he hasn't kept. After this story I got a much better call from a female student. She was a bit upset about the story but was cordial and wanted to understand what makes something news.
She asked some good questions and fundamentally wanted to know why one personal thing was news and another personal thing wasn’t. I explained the news criterion and dealt with example she wanted to talk about. I told what a reporter’s purpose was and why I write some stories that make people look bad and do in with a good conscience. I told her about the journalistic code of ethics and she was happy and felt she understood and said she was going to explain it to her friends who were talking about the story.
When I was talking to her I thought about how I called the best friend of a dead 16-year-old and realizing he hadn’t heard that his friend had been shot with a .45 during marijuana deal and I heard the boy crying.
I knew then what life was and what pain was and what empathy was. I touched humanity in its fullest. I tried to put all of that into my story about the dead boy. I could have done a better job. With every story I am trying again.
I am waiting for the next story, waiting to catch humanity and render it in ink.
by Daniel Silliman @
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| 18.4.02 |
The Weed
Razormouth has an interesting and informative piece on the weed. Not that weed. The old kind.
Pipes are popular here, especially among the more intelligent, academically minded students. The image cut by a pipe smoker is certainly an intelligent one and an attractive one to someone like myself. I'm told the health problems and the costs are significantly less than cigarette smokers because the smoke is held in the mouth, not the lungs, and the smoking of the pipe is an occasion--something done at most weekly by these students, not the hourly inhale of the cigarette puffers.
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Success, Philosophical Nirvana, the Right School
I did it. Writing two papers and producing one hard news story and all the other required things, I still managed to save tonight for the philosophy lecture and the discussions and party and the head of the Philosophy/Religion department’s house tonight.
I went 72 hours only sleeping for nine, but everything was accomplished and I am still all here—a little strung out but all here.
The lecture was by a physicalist (know as materialist but, with this name, not to be confused with other materialists of other fields) on physicalism and dualism and trying to moderate a new theory answering the problems inherent in both. Everything was very fascinating.
I am catching up, and thoroughly feel to be learning large portions. I feel to be a fish in the right capacity of water, forced to compete and play the field, not falling into dominance by default.
I love the philosophy faculty and certainly enjoyed coming more into their acquaintance, moving into their circle. This is a large part of why I chose this school and experiences like this confirm I have chosen well.
When my brain is firing steadily again and I have slowed done a bit I hope to post about the philosophy of the mind controversies.
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Corrections
Seeing that corrections are a function of having readers, I consider this, my first corrections blog, a good thing despite the mistakes or oversights I am correcting.
Post Fairfield: Amanda, the art major who spoke with me after my presentation, liked my presentation and was sympathetic to my critique of Hillsdale, noted that she wasn’t the only art major attending. Another art major, Mike, was present for the second half of the presentation and the discussion.
Reporter’s Advantage: Jonathan Nikkila, Collegian Managing Editor, who I didn’t know Knew about my site, pointed out that he wasn’t so much surprised that a reporter got the documents. (“Well, I was a little,” he admitted. “I didn’t know they were that public.”) As an editor of a collage paper where students must be goaded into writing stories and fed ideas for stories he was gladdened to see me bring in a good, interesting and investigative story that he hadn’t heard of or thought of.
Consider him not, then, surprised, but laughing from gladness and feeling vindicated by seeing a good job done. Fair 'nuff.
Daniel: Remember not to write so much about people who read your blog
by Daniel Silliman @
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| 17.4.02 |
The Dilemma of the Modern
My history paper, written late last night into the early hours of this morning
Modern man has stuck his head outside the inverted bowl of order, seen the functioning chaos of the universe, and found he did not need God. The cosmos runs distinct of and independent from a sovereign Being, and God is painfully irrelevant. In this departure from faith, this retreat of God from the world, man has lost the things that made him human.
Continue...
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Ignoratio Elenchi
Seraphim offers an interesting paragraph on the latin phrase. He's always continuing our language education. Well done.
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The Universal Sign of Surrender
It was, during the chivalrous periods—the Middle Ages—when armies had banners, a white flag.
In the great wars, the American Civil War, WWI, WWII, it was the raising of both hands to show that you didn’t carry a weapon.
Today, in the total wars of terrorism and civilizations wars against terrorism, it looks like the new universal sign of surrender is the raising of your shirt, showing your hairy stomach isn’t strapped with explosives.
Will the new cry be “Drop your gun and pull your shirt up”?
I think this new sign of surrender reflects the symbolic state of our world, I’m just not sure how.
by Daniel Silliman @
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Late Nights, Hard Work
I'm becoming quite the creature of the night. Last night was an English research paper drive and I was working hard until 4 a.m. But it was sorth it because things came together. Tonight I have a history paper--a shorter piece, thankfully--and expect another late one. The only thing making things worse is I have to attend a trial for the school paper in the morning, 8:45 a.m.
Insanity of insanities, all is insanity.
But I will pull off a good paper on modernism and write two interesting news stories for this weeks paper, hitting the campus Thursday.
by Daniel Silliman @
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| 16.4.02 |
Reporter's Advantage
Perhaps the greatest thing about being a reporter is the opportunity, or task, of asking questions that others wouldn't of couldn't ask. We are the people who ask the bereaved to tell us about the dead, who ask the powerful for explainations, who ask the shamed for their stories. We ask for details and for background and for stories and pasts and for sensitive and personal information, and people answer.
This morning, before class, I walked into the schools treasurers office and asked for the College's tax report for the fiscal year ending in 2001 and the one ending in 2000 and was given photocopies of the report. An editor, sadly enough, was suprised that I was given the documents, since they are a bit sensitive (though public). In a way I understand his disbeleif, I approached the institution and asked how much money it was bringing in and how much it was paying out. And I was given an answer.
This is the heady stuff of journalism.
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New York Sun
The new New York paper is on the streets this morning. The paper, headed up by publishing success Seth Lipsky, is intended to give more solid city coverage and a conservative slant (similar to the Washington Times, but without the Moonies).
Working with these guys would be great. I wrote asking for an internship this summer, but of course that was a bit insane and they didn't take me up on the offer. I will try again next year. Trying to beat the NY Times in covering the city on a daily basis would be a real high.
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Observations in the Night
It is hot tonight, stuffy and humid in an early Midwestern spring sort of way, without a breeze to break things up. My dorm room door is open, trying to create a draft of air through my room and to the open window at the end of the hall.
The hall is silent, lit a pale red by the glowing exit sign over the stairway. It is late, 3 a.m., and everyone is asleep on my hall, preparing for the jarring sounds of the alarms that always come too soon.
My roommates in asleep in the top bunk, curled up and with his face toward the wall. I see the frame of his skiny naked back and his thin curly hair lighted by my laptop. He rolls over. “So where am I going to go?” he asks in his sleep. He rolls over, away from the light of my moniter.
I am awake. Working on an English paper that was slow coming into shape, a paper that is finally working in the late night drive, I listen to Bob Dylan’s first album through headphones.
“I’m out here a thousand miles from my home, walking a road other men have gone down. I’m seeing a new world of people and things, here paupers and peasants and princes and kings…”
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Osama bin Laden's blog
A very strange blog. I'm not sure if this is funny, effective satire, or a serious abuse of weblogs.
It does seem to be trying to carry the joke so steadily and so far strains it a bit.
by Daniel Silliman @
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An interesting site on Catholicism by a devout Catholic and former priest named Michael Dubruiel.
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Post Fairfield
My presentation to the Fairfield Society on the nature of art went okay. My talk (about 20 minutes) wasn’t what I wanted. It was poor rhetorically, coming more in the form of an outline or a statement and less in the form of a speech. It was, however, concise, which was valuable.
The discussion afterward was good (it is not strictly a question and answer period because the floor is pretty open and the speaker is not the only one answering questions). I had to deal with the questions I expected, questions on my art definition, and also with some issues I had never thought of, some of Hegels opinions, questions of progressivism, the internationality fallacy, and others.
One art major came. She seemed to be in general agreement with me and told me she enjoyed the presentation. We talked a little afterward and she said she disliked Hillsdale art because of its lack of emotion. She apparently hadn’t read my editorial or known of the controversy but when I told her my thesis had been that Hillsdale art is safe boring and predictable, she laughed and agreed with me.
by Daniel Silliman @
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| 15.4.02 |
Philosphy vs. Journalism (revisited)
I'm looking at U.C Berkely as a Grad school I would be interested in attending if I go for my Ph.D in philosophy. I've been having some philosophy days recently. I've been reading about the 20th century history of physics in the book The Second Creation, and I am attracted to the ivory tower I see.
Maybe I'll count the number of days in a year I'm leaning toward one career and the number I'm leaning towards another and go with the one I lean towards more often.
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Better than the Government
A pro-market story in the L.A. Times showing how private businesses, now training the Afgan armies, are a better alternative to the Government doing the same thing. These guys are one step from mercenaries, and pretty cool.
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